Review: Tom Jones - What's New, Pussycat? (1965)

Tracks: 1) What’s New Pussycat?; 2) Some Other Guy; 3) I’ve Got A Heart; 4) Little By Little; 5) Won’t You Give Him (One More Chance); 6) Bama Lama Bama Loo; 7) With These Hands; 8) Untrue Unfaithful; 9) To Wait For Love; 10) And I Tell The Sea; 11) The Rose; 12) Endlessly.

REVIEW

The big problem with ‘What’s New, Pussycat?’ — one of the most controversial songs ever to come out of the Bacharach/David camp — is not that it’s sexist (although it certainly is, but then what wasn’t sexist back in 1965?). The big problem is that it’s simply not sexy. It’s a loud, jarring waltz with a country fair / carnival flavor, with a loud, jarring, and highly obnoxious lead singer who’s coming on so strong that it feels like he’s way more interested in showing the whole world just how big and burly and overpowering he is, rather than, you know, actually make love or anything like that. I don’t really know why that song exists, honestly. It’s not seductive, it’s not funny, its vocal hooks are blunt and tasteless, and the only possible reason to sing it in a karaoke bar would be a desire to cherish the single most embarrassing memory of your entire life in case you need source material for a game of Truth or Dare somewhere along the line.

Oh no, wait, I know the real purpose of the song. They wrote it simply so that somebody could put the line "I’ll soon be kissing your sweet little pussy" on record and get away with it. Yeah, that’s pretty much what Tom Jones sings in the last verse, heh heh (with the last two syllables merely a clever ruse to cover it up). Who knows, maybe Burt and Hal weren’t strangers to Truth or Dare themselves. In any case, if there’s any true historical importance to the song, it is that it represents a rare case of mischievous hooliganry on the part of Messrs. "They Long To Be Close To You" Bacharach and David, perhaps worth a listen for that very fact and nothing else.

It’s not unusual, of course, that the number, used as the title song for the infamous 1965 screwball comedy of the same name, became Tom’s biggest US hit (meanwhile, in the UK it proved unable to beat the success of ‘It’s Not Unusual’), unmatched in popularity until ‘She’s A Lady’ five years later (a song that largely delivered the same message, but in a funkier, more straightforward manner). America, as we know, just loves all things B-I-G, and ‘What’s New, Pussycat?’, with its bombastic arrangement and the most in-yer-face performance put up by Tom until then, fit right in with the public tastes. Here was something that one of those hip British Invasion guys was singing with the flair of a Texan oil magnate; how could it not be a big hit for the man?

The success was so smashing that Tom’s American label, Parrot, decided to go ahead and follow it up with an extra LP — so keep in mind that the resulting album, also titled What’s New Pussycat?, is in no way a soundtrack to the actual movie (which mostly consisted of Bacharach/David songs as performed by Dionne Warwick and Manfred Mann, among others), but rather consists of various scattered 1965 recordings from Tom, including a bunch of songs that had originally been left off the US version of Along Came Jones, some obscure B-sides from contemporary singles, and a few outtakes specially preserved for the American market. In fact, if you chop off the four songs that had already been included on Tom’s UK debut, what you’re left with are eight short songs barely amounting to 20 minutes of new material.

Of these, the most remembered one is probably Tom’s take on the old standard ‘With These Hands’, which, coincidentally (or not), was also recorded the same year by P. J. Proby for his second album, so if you have six minutes to kill, you can compare the two Gigantic Vocal Giants of 1965 side-by-side — personally, I’m at a loss for words here, because this glitzy pomp always refuses to get digested by my emotional tract, and the best I can say is "gee, nice lung power!" But at least when Mr. Jones uses this power instead on a flamboyant piece of pure lose-your-head entertainment like the cover of Little Richard’s ‘Bama Lama Bama Loo’, it makes adequate sense — and, for that matter, of all the old school rockers Little Richard was probably the closest figure in spirit to Tom: pure wild-eyed maniacal energy with no room for subtlety, irony, or reservation. (Their conjoined 1969 performance on Tom Jones’ TV show is probably my personal favorite of all the Tom Jones duets with other «legends» on that show, just because they match each other so well in form and purpose).

Most of the other new material here is credited to Gordon Mills (sometimes with Tom sharing the credits), and although nothing stands out in terms of originality, the rocking material is a little preferable to the Vegasy side of the pie: ‘Little By Little’, stealing its title from the Rolling Stones and its melody from Chuck Berry’s ‘Memphis Tennessee’ (which, not coin­cidentally, Tom also recorded a cover of that same year), is a good showcase for The Squires, with a bit of the good old garage spirit there shining through all the brass encumbrance; of course, Tom’s fundamental approach to singing is always on the campy side, but sometimes a bit of camp mixed with a bit of garage can be fun! The «exotica»-style flute-and-organ touch on ‘Untrue Unfaithful’ is also amusing — Tom in «witchy-woman» mode is just a little reminiscent of Screamin’ Jay Hawkins (odd thing, really, that he never ended up covering ‘I Put A Spell On You’).

Everything else ultimately depends on the arrangement: I appreciate the cover of Solomon Burke’s ‘Won’t You Give Him (One More Chance)’ for its primary reliance on tasteful, almost harpsichord-flavored, acoustic guitar — and I actively dislike how the potentially decent folk-pop ballad ‘I Tell The Sea’ has that same guitar swallowed up and overwhelmed by the swooping strings (not to mention Tom’s laying it really thick on the vibrato, but oh well, that’s how one infiltrates the hearts of the middle-aged housewives and if it never fails, who am I to criticize an efficient technique?).

In the end, I can more or less paint a mental portrait of the potential audience for each single song on here — with the glaring exception of the title track; in this case, I simply have no idea who you have to be in order to get your kicks from a song like ‘What’s New, Pussycat?’. I’ve even listened to several cover versions, just to see if anybody fared better with the idea, and found most of them even more clueless than the original (the one by Bobby Darin is particularly bland and boring). In the end, I think I am decreeing that the best way to listen to the song is by plugging in Alvin & The Chipmunks: it’s pretty much the only version that felt adequate to me — though, for best effect, it should probably be accompanied with a Loony Tunes cartoon.

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